"Faithless
Electors" are members of the Electoral College who, for
whatever reason, do not vote for their party's designated candidate.

Since
the founding of the Electoral College, there have been 156 faithless
Electors.71
of these votes were changed because the original candidate died
before the day on which the Electoral College cast their votes.Three of the votes were not cast at all as three Electors
chose to abstain from casting their Electoral vote for any
candidate.The other 82
Electoral votes were changed on the personal initiative of the
Elector.

Sometimes Electors change their votes in large
groups, such as when 23 Virginia Electors acted together in 1836.
Many times, however, these Electors stood alone in their decision.As of the 2000 election, no Elector has changed the outcome
of an election by voting against their party’s designated
candidate.

Despite
these 156 faithless votes, and a Supreme Court ruling allowing
states to empower political parties to require formal pledges from
Presidential Electors (Ray v Blair, 343 US 214), 21 states still do
not require their members of the Electoral College to vote for their
party's designated candidate.

The 24
states that do have requirements issue a small variety of rarely
enforced punishments for faithless Electors, including fines and
misdemeanors.

2000 - Barbara Lett-Simmons (Democrat, District of Columbia)
In the most recent act of Elector abstention, Barbara Lett-Simmons, a Democratic Elector from the District of Columbia, did not cast her vote for Al Gore as expected. Her abstention was meant to protest the lack of Congressional representation for Washington, DC.
Lett-Simmons was the first Elector to abstain from voting since 1832. Her abstention did not affect the outcome of the election.

Margaret
Leach, a nurse from Huntington, WV, was pledged to the Democratic
Party. During the Electoral College process, Leach learned that
members of the Electoral College were not required to vote for the
candidates they were pledged to.

Upon
learning this, she decided to draw more attention to the situation
by switching her votes for President and Vice President.She cast her Presidential vote for Lloyd Bentsen, the
Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, and cast her Vice
Presidential vote for Michael Dukakis, the Democratic Presidential
candidate.

Leach
tried to convince other Electors to join her, but hers remained the
only unexpected vote.

Mike
Padden, a lawyer from Spokane, WA, was pledged to vote for Gerald
Ford, the 1976 Republican candidate for President.Instead, for President, Padden
voted for Ronald Reagan, who had run in the Republican primary and
lost, and for Vice President he voted for Robert Dole, Gerald
Ford's running mate.

Roger
L. MacBride was pledged to the Republican party of Virginia.However, in the 1972 election, MacBride did not cast his
Electoral vote for Richard Nixon, the Republican Presidential
candidate, but for John Hospers, the Libertarian Presidential
candidate.

He
also cast his Vice Presidential vote for Toni Nathan, the
Libertarian Vice Presidential candidate, (making Nathan the first
woman to receive an Electoral vote).

MacBride
ran as the Libertarian candidate for President in the next election
but did not receive any Electoral votes of his own.

Henry
D. Irwin, a Republican Elector from Oklahoma, was originally pledged
to Richard Nixon. Irwin later admitted in an interview with CBS that
he "could not stomach" Nixon.

He
tried to convince the Democratic and Republican Electors to reject
both Kennedy and Nixon as Presidential candidates. His choice
replacement was a combination of two conservative Senators: Harry F.
Byrd of Virginia and Barry Goldwater of Arizona.In fact, he sent out telegrams to the other Electors.

Irwin
received several replies (about 40) from other Electors but he was
the only one to vote against his designated party. He cast his
Electoral votes for Byrd and Goldwater.

In
the same election 14 unpledged Electors (eight from Mississippi and six
from Alabama) cast their Presidential votes for Harry Byrd.All 14 also voted for Senator Strom Thurmond of South
Carolina as Vice President.

In
1896, two parties, the Democratic Party and the People’s Party,
ran William Jennings Bryan as their Presidential candidate.

The
two parties, though they shared a Presidential candidate, nominated
different candidates for Vice President. The Democratic Party
nominated Arthur Sewall and the People’s Party nominated Thomas
Watson.

The
People’s Party won 31 Electoral votes but four of those Electors
voted with the Democratic ticket, supporting Bryan as President and
Sewall as Vice President.

In
this election, seven out of the nine Electors from Georgia refused
to vote for Vice Presidential candidate John Calhoun.All seven cast their Vice Presidential votes for William
Smith instead.Andrew
Jackson won his re-election, with John Calhoun as his Vice
President.

William
Plummer, Sr. was pledged to vote for Democratic-Republican candidate
James Monroe. Instead, he cast his vote for John Quincy Adams, also
of the Democratic-Republican Party, although Adams was not a
candidate in the 1820 election.

Supposedly,
Plummer did not feel that the Electoral College should unanimously
elect any President other than George Washington.

Other
than three Electors who did not cast votes, Plummer’s vote for
Adams was the only vote not cast for Monroe.